I heart cupcakes

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 05:41:04 GMT

Cupcakes are my new favorite things. When a birthday would roll around, I used to order a Costco sheet cake with the strawberry cheesecake filling and whipped cream icing. They have enough designs that we could convince the kids that it matched their birthday party theme. Unfortunately, Costco discontinued the whipped cream icing and the only option now is "crisco-licious" buttercream. Time to figure out a new birthday dessert. I tried a couple store bought cakes with my own decorations, and even a homemade cake or two. Then I found my true calling...cupcakes.

I am the first to admit I can tend to get slightly obsessed with a new thing. The craftier, the better. I get all gung-ho about it and get the supplies and then it fizzles out. I have a closet full of craft supplies to prove it. There have been many of these over the years, but I will not own up to them in this forum because my husband reads this and there may be one or two that he has forgotten about or never realized in the first place. Trust me...there have been more than a few.

Anyway, cupcakes. This may be one of my few lasting obsessions. I started simple with just contrasting sugar sprinkles, and moved on to some that were decorated like ladybugs and butterflies. I offered to make some for a baby shower at church. I pulled up the mom's registry and matched them to her room decor. There were starfish and turtles and fish...very cute. That was enough to make me the cupcake baker for baby showers at church. Duckies and elephants followed. I just use a boxed vanilla cake mix, but somehow people think they taste better when they look that cute.

I think I love cupcakes because one is cute, but 24 of the same or similar design are high impact. I made some for a school thanksgiving feast...not even for one of my own kids' classes! They were super cute turkeys. One was cute, but 24 of the same almost made me cry!

Giovanni picked out the funniest monkey stuff for his birthday. One of those was really not the cutest, but 24 of them...super cute! Nevie asked me to make her some French poodle ones for her party at school. OK, I can totally put an Eiffel Tower on a cupcake. We ended up having two versions...one for the school party and one for the "real" party to match the paper plates.

Madison (the turkey cupcake recipient) had her birthday yesterday. Michelle, her mom, said she would make cupcakes. Maddie wanted to know if I would make them instead. "Of course...her theme is the movie 'Enchanted'?..yikes." After I pulled the paper goods up online, I was even more stumped. But she was at our house and told me how excited she was that I was making her cupcakes, because "yours are famous." No pressure. I ended up with little white dresses on purple frosting. But they were a little plain. So I added those little silver bead candies as a waistband. On 24 cupcakes. By hand. With tweezers. I got a report back that there was a collective gasp when they were unveiled and all the girls knew immediately that it was the dress from Enchanted. Now they really are famous. At least in Mrs. Gammel's first grade class.

A Little About A Lot

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 21:06:31 GMT

Some have said that I am a person who knows a little bit about a lot of things. Or how to do a lot of things. I usually think it is something that anyone could do...sometimes I am right, and sometimes I am wrong about that. My first realization of that was when someone paid---cash-money---for a blankie that I had made. And then it kept happenening. I even had to re-order tags, after running through what I thought was a lifetime supply of them. Now, I am by no means a blankie mogul, but I have been able to buy a pair or two of shoes with the profits.

This "a little about a lot" was brought to my attention again this weekend. I recently took over as nursery director at our church. Of course, my first action was to re-paint and spruce up the room itself. There are, of course, other duties, but I must confess that I was most excited about this one. In my head, I had visions of lambs frolicking and butterflies fluttering and clouds drifting. There have been occasions where the vision in my head was much better than the finished product, and this project seemed particularly ambitious. But, I had a couple girlfriends help me roll the sky blue and meadow green onto the walls and then I took a deep breath and put paintbrush to wall. I am happy to report that the result is even better than the vision it started as in my head. I wanted to post some pictures of it here, because sometimes it is nice just to say..."Look what I did!"

I am not delusional enough to think that every project will be quite this successful, so I promise to share the flops, too. Hopefully it will be a long time before I get to that post.

Alpha Mom: look what i did

I heart cupcakes

A Little About A Lot